Was it just a hiccup in the continually rising “debt ceiling,” a monkey wrench in the smoothly turning wheels of government, a boorish slap at the warm, enveloping embrace of “Obamacare”?

Should Americans now thank their Maker that the conservative revolt has been quelled so the federal government can continue to spend and spend without limits? Should we count ourselves fortunate for having patriots in the Senate and White House who forced open the nation’s coffers to nationalize health care for all Americans – only just not “now” for these same “temporarily” exempted lawmakers, as well as the president, assorted unions and big businesses?

Cuban refugees pray for the success of the Bay of Pigs invasion at a rally in downtown Bayfront Park in Miami, Fla., April 19, 1961.

---

Robert Strauss, longtime reader and penpal, writes in to make an apt historical comparison I haven't seen before between Obama, a president who didn't order the military support for Americans under fire in Benghazi, and Kennedy, a president who canceled military support for Americans and Cuban exiles under fire in the Bay of Pigs.

What drew his eye were the four questions Charles Woods, father of slain ex-SEAL Ty Woods, recently asked Obama, including whether Obama would have acted more aggressively to rescue Americans in Benghazi if his own children had been there.

Diana,
Obama's letter to Charles Woods brings to mind this paragraph by a paramilitary CIA operative at the Bay of Pigs, reacting to Theodore Sorensen's downplaying...

On September 11, 2013, Charles Woods appeared on Fox News' "Hannity" and read aloud four questions about Benghazi from a letter he'd sent to President Obama.

Woods, whose son, ex-SEAL Tyrone Woods, was one of four Americans killed in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, added: “What we want are not just answers. We also want the truth.”

President Obama has now written in reply to Woods’ letter. This marks the president’s first response to direct questions about Benghazi since May of this year when he answered one question at a press conference. That particular question concerned aftermath “talking points,” not the attack itself.

Charles Woods’ questions for the president are very different. Rather than address post-attack spin control or even pre-attack security – as most press and politicians are wont to do – Woods’ questions for the president concern the attack itself.

Thirty-two years ago, Ronald Reagan gave his first Inaugural Address. His words still illuminate.

“We are a nation that has a government – not the other way around,” he said. “And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth.”

For the past nearly two weeks, some of the temporary custodians of our government – President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to name two – have impressed upon the nation their scorn for this same founding principle. That, of course, means their scorn for Us, the People. Above all, in trying to force House Republicans to fund Obamacare against the wishes of the voters who elected them, they want us to understand that we don’t “have” a government, the government has us.

And not only us, but everything else. That’s why, for the first time, I feel like a tenant in my own country as President Obama has assumed the role of landlord.

Below is the horrendous, Uncle-Sam-shameful story of tourists who happened to be visiting Yellowstone as the shutdown took effect. Ordered out of the park (the tour bus guide had paid $300 the day before to enter), ordered not to stop (even at restrooms) along the road out of the park, ordered mid-snap not to take pictures of a herd of bison -- Stop "recreating," said the armed ranger -- they were then locked in under armed guard at The Old Faithful Inn, ajacent to the famous geyser -- around which the feds erected barricades to prevent them even from seeing it!

What I want to know is how it is that the park rangers slip so easily into thug-fascist-mode? And, more important, When do we say stop? I wish I had a boat to join the flotilla that retired Navy Capt Ross who is trying to organize to reopen the waterway Obama illegally closed in Florida.

As the tour guide put it: “The national parks belong to the people. This...

As some of you may be aware (chortle, chortle), American Betrayal came in for a little flack in the past couple of months.

As I marshalled my forces -- all 22,000 words' worth -- many filled the breach with eloquent, passionate, heartfelt defenses both of my book and of free and civil debate overarchingly. I didn't want these missives from the front to disappear into Internet ether. This amazing record of intellectual battle in real time needed a repository. To that end, I have published both my rebuttal, which originally appeared in three parts at Breitbart News, and a selection of these essays written in my behalf in a new book, The Rebuttal: Defending American Betrayal from the Book-Burners. Authors include...

The good news is there are a mere 75 terrorist "operatives" left in all of Afghanistan.

The bad news is the US government wants our very special US Special Forces to remain in Afghanistan indefinitely to continue to hunt them.

Is that the best use of our men and money? Of course not. After all, if these terrorist ops represent such a dire threat to 300 million Americans at home, it is much easier and cheaper and safer to curtail or just plain halt Afghan entry into the US until all 75 of them are captured or killed -- by the Afghans -- and barricade our borders with our soon-to-be homecoming troops instead of the World War II Memorial,right?

Fortunately, like me, the Afghan government is also completely opposed to our forces remaining in Afghanistan indefinitiely to do the hunting -- more good news. But the US is boo-hooing that this means we might not be able to spend billions more dollars in Afghanistan on projects and programs that will go down the drain with the rest of them.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A question Americans should answer for themselves is the one I am thinking through while standing at the National World War II Memorial on the Washington Mall this week. What kind of president doesn’t do everything he can to ensure that the elderly American men in wheelchairs I see before me don’t have access to “their” memorial – even during a government shutdown?

And when I say “their” memorial, I am not only referring to their World War II veteran status. This memorial cost $182 million to build; $197 million was raised privately (the extra money remains in a memorial fund). This nongovernment money came not only from corporations and wealthy individuals, but also from a long list of veterans groups. Naturally, hefty donations came from the big national organizations, such as Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and Disabled American Veterans. On the memorial website, however, you will also find listed scores of smaller donors,...

The following is a report from state-supported Russia Televsion on DNI Clapper's testimony on the impact on the government shutdown on inteligence.

The italics are in the original -- so the Big Boss is sure to notice.

What drew my eye was this (itals in original):

"This is a dreamland for foreign intelligence services to recruit, particularly as our employees, already many of whom subject to furloughs driven by sequestration, are going to have, I believe, even greater financial challenges,” said Clapper.

If this is true -- that some number of paychecks (all but certainly to become backpay) is what separates our intelligence agents from immediate defection -- we're really in trouble. If it's not true, if it's just more political grandstanding, the cloak and dagger set could feel pretty darn insulted, hurt, even. (Well, if that's the way you feel, what's that phone # for the Russian Consulate ....?)

Two extraordinary media moments took place today, both created when press-card-carrying MSM-ers stepped out of character and actually probed the Democrat veneer.

CNN's Dana Bash asked Senate Democrats why not just support the House bill that funds the NIH, where clinical trials for children with cancer are under way. This prompted the following from Harry Reid, after some total agitprop about Obamacare's debut: "It's working now, it will continue to work and people will love it even more than they do now by far."

DANA BASH: But if you could help one child who has cancer why wouldn't you do it?

REID: Lissen, why would we want to do that? I have 1100 people at Nellis Air Force Base sitting home. They have a few problems of their own. This is, to have someone of your intelligence suggest such a thing [means] you're irresponsible.

Gates of Vienna has been chronicling last month's events in Warsaw where "a team of liberty-loving people from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Poland, the UK, and the USA was in attendance. They represented the International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA), Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa (BPE-Austria and -Germany), ACT! for America, ACT! for Canada, the Center for Security Policy, the Stresemann Foundation, and Women for Freedom."

They assembled to take the crucial battle of words by which nations, peoples, thoughts are completely controlled and flim-flammed into submission to "global institutions" and other bulliles into such bellies of the beast as the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. (It is amazing to think a sentient being thought that title up up.) This meeting and others were taking place under the auspices of the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation...